President Obama Not Allowed To Use iPhone

It’s a common misconception that the President of the United States can do whatever he wants to do. One would be easily forgiven for thinking that the President could have whatever kind of technology he wanted in his hands at any moment of the day or night. He’s the President, after all. Who’s going to tell him no? Well, apparently the White House security detail has been refusing to allow President Obama to have a very popular piece of technology: the iPhone. In fact, President Obama is still stuck with his Blackberry (he may be the only person who still uses a Blackberry) and says his staff may have to pry it out of his hands before he will give it up. So, if you would one day like to be President, but enjoy using an iPhone, you’d better give one of those things up right now.

Even The President Can’t Always Get What He Wants

Here’s an ironic twist to this story – President Obama can use an iPad, but not an iPhone. And, to rub it in even more, President Obama’s daughters are allowed to have and use their own iPhones. Maybe he can get a voice calling app on the iPad and settle for the next best thing.

So why can’t the President of the United States use Apple’s iPhone? It all comes down to potential security problems with the phone that must not exist with the iPad. One of those potential problems could be individuals locating the President based off of location data sent by the iPhone.

Since the NSA is acutely aware of how to spy on people around the world through their phones, it is likely that there is some merit to all of the security concerns with President Obama using an iPhone. Perhaps Apple should address these concerns as well and create a phone that doesn’t report location data quite so easily.

So, no – the President of the United States can’t just do whatever he wants whenever he wants to do it. I wonder if his security team would let him use an Android phone in the future?

[Image via swampland]

SOURCE: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57614604-94/president-obama-says-he-cant-use-iphone-for-security-reasons/